Happy Ending
by Lynnliz13
Summary: Captain Byron Hadley would be the first to tell you his foresight left much to be desired. After all, if he knew things would end up like THIS, he would've gotten a different job. Short one-shot for Shawshank Redemption.


**We watched "The Shawshank Redemption" in my Creative Writing class, and were told to write something pertaining the movie. It could be whatever we wanted - a reflection in our journal entries, a letter to a character, adding a scene... Recognizing this as a chance to write fanfiction for school credit, my brain produced THIS. My teacher told me she really liked it... So here. I hope you like it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)**

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Captain Byron Hadley looked down for the umpteenth time at the letter held in his hands. It had the soft pliability of a leaf well-worn, creases sharp and even as if he had ironed them. Byron had long since memorized every mark on this paper. He kept it in his left breast pocket under his jacket during the day, and carefully tucked inside his pillowcase at night.

His eyes curled around the large, familiar loops of her handwriting, trying to count how many years had passed since he'd spent any length of time at home. He ran his thumb over the picture at the bottom before replacing it in his pocket, glad she'd drawn it with crayons instead of using smudge-prone, easily fading colored pencils.

Byron made his way to the roof, where his station was already set up. Samuel was due to appear in fifteen minutes.

He hadn't signed up for this. More and more he was beginning to realize that he didn't belong here. Way back in the beginning, when he was still a well-mannered officer fresh from the Academy and Samuel Norton was an ambitious young administrative assistant, he never would have wanted this. But he needed money for his family, and his friend had a plan. Andy Dufresne was helping that plan work much better than expected.

Samuel appeared, and nodded at him before backing out of sight. Moments later, Tommy Williams approached the shadows at the edge of the searchlight.

Byron watched their brief exchange through his scope, finger curling around the trigger anxiously. This wouldn't be the first man to die by his hands, but he would be the youngest, and the first killed with intention. He watched Samuel give him the signal.

He tensed, hesitating. The image of the letter rose again in his vision, but he had a job to do. He pushed her out of his mind, and before he had the chance to think again, he pulled the trigger.

Four shots later, Tommy Williams was dead.

"...I don't know. It's not the same as it used to be. Have you noticed? Norton seems a little..."

There wasn't much response from his companions at the lunch table. Byron wasn't surprised; very little was said about the Warden, because there wasn't much good to say.

He knew they agreed with him. He saw the looks that passed between his fellow officers any time the Warden made a particularly questionable decision. He'd just given Dufresne two months in solitary confinement, a sentence completely unheard of before, without much of a reason at all. Norton was beginning to go insane.

Byron tried again. He needed some kind of confirmation from his peers. "Sometimes I wonder whether we should really be listening to him at all."

Suddenly Ray, his would-be second-in-command and long-time best friend, leaned in. His face was inches away from Byron's, an index finger raised between them for emphasis. "Now you listen to me and you listen good," he said in a low voice. "You'd better shut those lips of yours up or else bad things are gonna happen, believe you me." He flicked Byron on the nose and nonchalantly returned to his minestrone soup.

Byron shut his lips up. He was absolutely right.

Andy Dufresne walked by him on his routine trek back to his cell for lights out. From the looks of it, he hadn't lost too much weight in the last two months. It also seemed that he'd found a new pair of shoes while he was in the Hole.

Byron's lips twitched up at the corners. Whatever Dufresne had up his sleeve, it was sure to be interesting to watch.

Captain Byron Hadley listened to the sound of approaching sirens. He knew who had stolen the Warden's money, and he knew who had spilled to the press. He knew that they would be here soon, to put him in a cell just like the ones he'd been slamming shut all these years. It seemed oddly fitting, this role reversal. It was almost a relief to be freed from his role as middleman for all Samuel Norton's dirty deeds. He only hoped that his own guards hadn't fallen into the same pattern of mindless order following that he had, and that Norton was the only corrupt prison warden. Suddenly the residents of Shawshank seemed much less like the cattle he'd told himself they were.

They would read about this in the newspapers. Jane, the beautiful woman he'd abandoned so long ago, would be the wife of a monster, and Molly... Molly, who must have been twelve or thirteen by now...

Byron decided he would ask for two lawyers. One would represent him in the customary trial; the other would help him set his girls free.

As they pushed him into the back of the police car, a much different view than the one he was used to, Byron felt a strange sense of peace. Like it or not, this was the ending to his story. Now he, too, would be given a shot at redemption. It was about as much as he could ask for.

* * *

**Thoughts?**


End file.
